Consultants aren't the problem they are the symptom. Some of them deal with issues that need to be dealt with (geological studies, looking at vibrations, etc), many of them are there to help with the massive overregulation which means you need to produce a report that no species of frog or insect is going to be upset by your new infrastructure project. The more regulations, the more consultants you need to deal with them.
But my understanding is that the primary source of cost overruns is rather endless appeals and the authorities changing their mind many times over the life of a project.
The thing is, the US has abnormally high costs even in comparison to other highly regulated countries. Germany, France, Spain and Italy all have lower costs despite the fact that you could dig a spade and hit an archeological site, and they’re also not environmental or labor pushovers either.
> Some of them deal with issues that need to be dealt with (geological studies, looking at vibrations, etc), many of them are there to help with the massive overregulation which means you need to produce a report that no species of frog or insect is going to be upset by your new infrastructure project.
The thing is, these regulations are all well-known, sometimes decades old. Here in Germany, we have "Machbarkeitsstudien" ("feasibility studies") for that reason - we first look for obvious issues before we make a final decision. Of course, sometimes stuff crops up that hasn't been foreseen (e.g. more WW2-era bombs than expected, something has not been spotted at the time of the initial study), but there is no excuse in not doing the due diligence before starting a new project.
Environmental protection is often abused as a scapegoat.
Where we have a massive issue is NIMBYism - citizens feel that projects have been ordered "par ordre mufti", i.e. decided without engaging the affected people, and obviously that is an incentive for those people to use all legal tools at their disposal to obstruct a project. Thankfully, since a few years it's become the norm to not do that any more and actively involve affected people and NGOs already during the planning phase or even before, so at least for future projects we can expect less destructive opposition.
> my understanding is that the primary source of cost overruns is rather endless appeals and the authorities changing their mind many times over the life of a project.
Precisely because the people who know what to do the first time around are not in-house. So you get a first push where they try to be quick and efficient, don't really know what the issues they're going to face are, and then 3 years in there's a complaint about a frog and they need to spend a million dollars on an expert to tell them "don't build it where the frog lives." It's penny wise pound foolish.
But my understanding is that the primary source of cost overruns is rather endless appeals and the authorities changing their mind many times over the life of a project.